Analytical Perspectives on Emerging Organic Contaminants in the Aquatic Ecosystem

Definition

Emerging contaminants (ECs) represent a group of synthetic, natural and some microbial contaminants either naturally occurring or introduced in the environmental matrices, profoundly in the water bodies (Richardson & Ternes, 2017) and little in the atmosphere (Barroso et al., 2019). Several scholars have defined ECs with different watchwords, yet the meaning remains intact (US EPA, 2018). Some essential phases defining ECs are presented in Figure 1. These include; emerging contaminants being chemical contaminants that had not previously detected, or emerging contaminants are contaminants suspected to cause human health risks but not yet fully understood (Richardson, Exposure, & Agency, 2006).

Figure 1.

Definitions of Emerging Contaminants

Emerging contaminants are also defined as contaminants that cannot be removed by conventional methods for water and wastewater treatment (Klamerth et al., 2010). In addition, emerging contaminants are contaminants that are continuously detected in the aquatic systems at trace levels thus requiring modern technology for their detection (Pal et al., 2014). Emerging contaminants have also been defined as a group of contaminants lacking monitoring regulations. Being the case, ECs have recently gained scientific attention since they are the least globally investigated contaminants, they are suspected to causes ecological risks and they do not fall under routine laboratory analyses (Miraji et al., 2018). Despite being neglected contaminants, their discovery goes back to 1960s.